Andrey Fursov's speech on Schiller Institute Conference was titled, "The Current World Crisis: Its Social Nature and Challenge to Social Science."Dear Colleagues: First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to the organizers of the conference, who invited me to speak here. I would like to start my talk with a quotation from the quintessential British imperialist, Winston Churchill, who, in 1940, wrote in a letter, that "Great Britain was fighting not against Hitler, and not even against National Socialism, but against the spirit of the German people, against the spirit of Schiller, so that this spirit would never be reborn."But now we are here, at a conference which was organized by the Schiller Institute, and it is our kind of asymmetrical answer to the British Empire. Crisis has become a code word of our time. But the question is-a crisis of what? We are told that it is a crisis of finance, it is a crisis of state, it is a crisis of education-so, it is a crisis of everything. But what does this mean, to be a crisis of everything? A crisis of everything means a systemic crisis. It is a crisis of the social system, and this social system is capitalism. So, first, a crisis of capitalism, and only secondly, a crisis of civilization, mankind. But what is capitalism? Descartes used to say "define the sense of the words." My working definition is that capitalism is a complicated institutional system which limits capital in its own long-term and holistic interests, and ensures expansion in space, externalizing the crisis, and exploitation.

By Jerome BurneImagine a parasite that lodges in the brain and starts to exert a sinister influence over your behaviour. It affects how sexy you feel, or how angry or frightened, even how you dress. Not only does such a creature exist – but it may have infected up to 40 per cent of the population.Perhaps the most famous example of such “zombie reprogramming” (or neuroparasitology, to give it its proper name) comes from a parasitic wasp that attaches its eggs to the belly of an orb spider. Larvae emerge and release chemicals that zombify the spider, which stops spinning its normal spiral web and instead starts producing a cocoon to hold the baby wasps when they emerge.Then there is a parasitic fungus called Ophiocordyceps. After being infected with its spores, the Camponotus ant, found in the Brazilian rainforest, develops an unsteady gait, wandering off its normal paths. The creature has become compelled to find a remarkably precise location: a tree about 25cm above the usual ant trails, facing northwest. At noon, it will clamp its jaws on to a leaf in a death grip. Within six hours, it will be dead. A few days later, a tube will sprout from the ant’s head. This is the fruiting body of the fungus that emits the spores, which will infect a new generation of ants..